Thornbound: Volume II of The Harwood Spellbook

by Stephanie Burgis

  My students were all clustered around it, wide-eyed and looking terribly worried. I smiled reassuringly as I gestured for them to clear my path.

  “Miss Harwood—!”

  “Miss Harwood—?”

  “Miss Harwood,” Miss Banks began, “can I—”

  “I’d prefer to be alone now,” I told them all, “but don’t worry. Everything will be fine.” I glided through the doorway with perfect ease, ignoring the swarm of panicked whispers that erupted behind me.

  Really, I wasn’t raging or bellowing impassioned threats. I couldn’t imagine why everyone was reacting so dramatically.

  Giving a pleasant smile to the maid I passed, I walked at a perfectly steady pace through the house to the study where I had locked up my most dangerous books of magic, the ones I’d never dare allow any impressionable student to find. These spells weren’t only dangerous to their intended victims; they could easily kill the mage who wielded them if any mistakes were made along the way.

  Luckily, in this case that risk was irrelevant. Casting any spell in the world would kill me anyway.

  I was in the midst of unlocking the cabinet where they were kept when the door burst open behind me.

  “Cassandra!” It was Jonathan, panting as if he had run all the way. He shoved one hand through his thick hair as he looked me frantically up and down. “You’re still here.”

  “Of course I am.” Sighing, I waved my free hand at him in dismissal. “Everything’s fine. You needn’t worry. I simply need to be alone, so—”

  “Did you find her?” Amy skidded into the room after her husband, her silk slippers skating across the wooden floor. She caught hold of his arm for balance as our gazes crossed. “Thank goodness.” Her shoulders sagged. Then her brown eyes narrowed as she looked past me to the cabinet with its multiple locks, half of them hanging open. “What exactly are you planning, Cassandra?”

  I loved my sister-in-law, so I forced myself not to roll my eyes at the inanity of her question. “I’m going to get my husband back, of course. But as I was just telling Jonathan, I don’t require any assistance, so—”

  “Of course you do,” Amy snapped. “There isn’t a single qualified magician in this house. How do you expect to fight a wild fey without magic?”

  “I don’t,” I said patiently, “but I won’t have to...because you’re wrong.” Turning my back to the cabinet, I crossed my arms and met her gaze head-on. “There is a qualified magician here who knows exactly what to do.”

  “No,” Amy breathed. For once, all of her careful, articulate arguments seemed to have deserted her. “No, no, no!”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Cassandra!” My older brother had paled at my words, but it only made his eyes look more vividly blue as he glared at me. “You know what every single physician said. If you cast any spell, no matter how minor—”

  “If I don’t,” I said flatly, “then Wrexham will die.” I’d already witnessed it in my dream, hadn’t I? I knew exactly how it would happen. Those vicious thorns stabbing into him again and again as the twisting green vines pinned him into place...

  How had I not realized that last night’s altered dream had been a warning?

  Never mind. There was no time to waste on self-recriminations. I turned back to the cabinet and opened the next lock with a vengeful twist of the key. “Just keep my students safe—and do not allow anyone, no matter how powerful she might be, to wander off on her own for any reason! Annabel may well have summoned this creature herself, but if she didn’t, then the real culprit is still hiding amongst us. She’ll never dare summon it for another attack if she’s surrounded by observers, though. So I’d keep everyone in one place until Wrexham or Mr. Westgate return, and then—”

  “Stop!” Amy’s hand closed around my arm, wrenching me around to face her furious expression. “Cassandra, stop. Take a moment to think about what you’re doing!”

  “I don’t have a moment to waste!” The words broke out of my chest like a cry of pain, nearly shattering the careful shield I’d built for myself ever since Luton had first spoken. I needed that shield to do what had to be done next—but it was nearly impossible to maintain it as Amy glared at me with hurt and fear in her beloved brown eyes.

  “Why do you think Wrexham’s trapped in there?” I demanded, flexing my fingers restlessly by my sides. “He went in there because of me. He was trying to protect me!”

  I could see it all so clearly. He’d sworn to leave the estate at dawn—so, as soon as I’d fallen safely asleep in his arms, he must have carefully disentangled himself and set off into the woods to investigate our fey menace for himself before the agreed-upon deadline could arrive.

  All day, as I’d taught classes and managed one crisis after another, he’d been imprisoned in my woods, tangled and helpless because of me.

  Westgate had been right about everything.

  “He went in there to protect you, you say?” Jonathan’s voice rose from a near-whisper to a bellow. “Then how do you think he’d feel about you running in there after him and killing yourself?”

  “I don’t care!” I shouted back at my brother, as the last shards of my shield collapsed entirely. “I can’t sit here and do nothing while that creature tortures and murders him! Could you, if Amy were the one sitting in those woods right now?” I turned to her, my breath coming in shallow pants. “What of you? Would you sacrifice Jonathan only to keep yourself safe?”

  “No one needs to be sacrificed tonight! And no one will be.” Amy’s eyes were still wide and panicked, but her voice rang like law through the room. “I mean it, Cassandra Harwood.” She crossed her arms. “I am the head of this family, and I will not allow you to throw yourself away like this.”

  I gave an involuntary laugh—but it came out as a sob, jagged pain twisting through my chest. In all the years of our sisterhood, we had never once suffered life-altering conflict with each other. No matter what crises we had faced—no matter which blows the external world had flung at either of us—we had always stood unflinchingly by each other’s sides.

  “Amy,” I said, “you should know me by now. When have I ever followed any rules I disagreed with?” I took a deep, unhappy breath as I slowly crossed my own arms and planted my feet more solidly on the ground. “And how exactly do you imagine you could stop me?”

  Amy’s eyes narrowed. I set my jaw.

  “Oh, for...!” Jonathan stalked across the room to step between us with a wordless snarl. “This is an idiotic argument. Cassandra, I’ll lock you up myself if it’s the only way to keep you here—and Wrexham would thank me on his knees for doing it. That man loves you far too much to want to trade your life for his!”

  “I can cast a spell no matter where you trap me.” I kept my gaze fixed on Amy’s dangerously thoughtful expression. “No matter what it takes, I will not spend the rest of my life knowing that I didn’t do everything I could to save my husband.”

  “Argh!” My gentle, soft-spoken older brother let out a near-roar of aggravation—and the door burst open behind him.

  Miss Birch looked more wild than I had ever seen her. Thin green streaks stretched like veins across the pale skin of her hands and throat, and her hazel eyes sparked with hot golden flecks. No one who saw her now could be in any doubt of the heritage she normally kept so carefully hidden.

  “It’s gone,” she said. “That creature took it!”

  “‘It?’” I blinked, shifting my attention warily away from Amy’s brooding expression. “If you’re referring to Mrs. Renwick—”

  “Not her.” Miss Birch swept her hand through the air in contemptuous dismissal—and staggered heavily, losing her balance.

  “Miss Birch!” Amy, Jonathan and I all started forward at once.

  “Oh, I’m well enough.” Catching herself without assistance, my housekeeper shook her head impatiently. “That creature crashed through my shields so hard, I was on my back and out of my senses for a good long while. But I’m back to work now, and if he or she imagines I
’ll cower away in fear like a worm—!” She glowered fiercely at all three of us.

  “Of course not!” Jonathan said hastily. “No one could ever be so foolish. But mayn’t I please pull out a chair for you? Just for a moment, for your comfort?”

  “Who cares for comfort? I’ve been trying to tell you, that ring, the one from the cursed altar—”

  “Altar?” Amy repeated blankly.

  She and Jonathan exchanged a mystified look. He shrugged.

  “You hadn’t told them about it?” Miss Birch’s eyebrows shot up. “I thought we were only keeping it secret from those inspectors.”

  I flinched as Amy and Jonathan both turned on me. “I hadn’t had an opportunity yet,” I muttered to all three of them.

  The fog of disbelief and unspoken reproach that rose around me at that statement was thick enough to choke upon.

  “I’ve been busy,” I snarled. “I was summoned away from our conversation this morning, if you recall. Ever since, I’ve been chasing one crisis after another—”

  “And last night, when it first happened?” Amy frowned. “You know perfectly well how often we’re awake with Miranda. If you’d only sent over a note, we could have come—”

  “Argh!” I scowled back at her. “We don’t have time to argue about this. I know what the two of you are enduring right now. I know how desperate you’ve been for sleep, and what you’ve already given up for my sake! So I was hardly going to drag you from your bed last night, and I will not drag you into every crisis I face. I will solve some problems for myself rather than allowing you two to be hurt—again—by them!”

  “And we must feel deeply grateful for that.” Jonathan’s tone was so dry, it scraped against my skin. “Because, obviously, neither of us—or your niece—could possibly be hurt at all by the way you’re planning to launch yourself at your latest crisis. Isn’t that right, Amy?”

  “No one is going to take any more risks except for me,” I gritted through my teeth. “No one else will be punished for any more of my failures. That is the entire point—”

  “Oh, Cassandra, you fool.” Amy took two quick steps forward and grasped my shoulders, her eyes gleaming with unshed tears. “What failures? Your school and your husband have both been attacked by outsiders. You can’t assume responsibility for evils that other people—”

  “I’m responsible for myself,” I snapped, “and I should have gone after him hours ago. I should have known!” Somehow, my hands had closed around hers; I only realized it as our fingers clenched around each other. “I could have known—I would have figured it out hours ago, if I’d only stopped to think! I’ve been lurching from one disaster to the next, not managing any of them well enough. I didn’t even have the simple wits to put the pieces together—”

  “Because you’ve been trying to do everything yourself,” Amy said firmly, “as always.” She gave my shoulders a gentle shake. “I swear, Cassandra, sometimes you seem to forget you even have a family.”

  “Pfft.” I sniffed to pull myself together. “According to Lionel Westgate, my fatal flaw is that I’m far too much a Harwood.”

  “Hmmph,” said Amy. “If you have any flaws, we are here to balance them—just as you do ours. That’s what family is for. It’s why we’re always strongest together.” She shook her head at me. “How could you possibly imagine that it wouldn’t hurt us to lose you?”

  “You’ve given up too much for me already. Your career, your closest friendship—”

  “I made the decisions I believed in.” Amy’s tone was unbending. “I followed my principles. If you think I regret any of that, you haven’t been paying enough attention to what I care most about. I told you: I want to change our country for the better, and this school, right here, is doing that. So for goodness’ sake, don’t shut me out of it!”

  “Or me,” added my brother, looking hangdog. “If you think I spent all those years sneaking you the key to Father’s library of magic only for you to lord it over me now because I can’t do any special spells myself—”

  “That is not—! Oh, Jonathan!” I slitted my eyes up at him as I finally spotted the smirk that he’d been trying to hide. Despite the relentless ticking of the clock within my head, I couldn’t help but groan. “That was a terrible joke to make in any circumstance.”

  “I could make far worse,” my brother told me. “I could pretend I wouldn’t mind losing my baby sister, as if it wouldn’t rip out half of my heart to have you killed. That wouldn’t be funny, would it? Or I could tell you it would be fine for Miranda to lose her only aunt.” He shook his head. “Who would ever stand up for her against us, with you gone? Or tell her to ignore all the old-fashioned rules we set?”

  “Who will ever give her a chance to learn magic if you give up and let this school close down now?” Amy added.

  I squeezed my eyes tightly shut as every unanswerable question rose up to besiege me. I’d been trying so hard not to think of any of them.

  “I can’t let Wrexham die,” I said. “I cannot.”

  “Then don’t,” said Jonathan. “But don’t save him by killing yourself! For once, give up your precious pride and let other people help you. You don’t have to do it all alone!”

  I opened my eyes and found Amy looking at me from scant inches away, her brown eyes dangerously perceptive and her fingers still clasped warmly around my shoulders. “We’re doing this for us,” she said quietly, “not for your sake. We’re doing what’s necessary to make ourselves happy. And we’re not the only ones who will be affected if you lose this particular battle. Every single one of those young women in the library is depending on your victory and your survival—not to mention all the other magical girls and women of the future.”

  “And the non-magical boys,” added my brother quietly. “We all need those stifling old dichotomies to be knocked askew, for all our sakes. Men need to find our own paths in life, too.”

  The door opened behind him before I could answer—and this time, my entire class of students piled through it. Miss Banks led the others, her fair cheeks flushed.

  “Forgive us for the interruption, Miss Harwood,” she said, “but we’ve been listening to your discussion.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Stepping away from Amy, I cocked one authoritative, outraged eyebrow. “If you’ve been pressing your ears against the door of my private office—”

  Miss Stewart cleared her throat. “We’ve been using a spell, actually—I found it in my uncle’s library last summer. It’s quite...clever?” Her voice lilted, turning the statement into a hopeful question.

  “We didn’t let either of those inspectors overhear it, though,” Miss Hammersley added hastily. “We left them listening to Mr. Luton’s theories about the proper management of woodland.”

  “Poor Honoria,” Amy murmured.

  “Nonetheless!” I heaved a sigh. “You know perfectly well—”

  “What we know is that Mr. Harwood is right,” said Miss Banks. “It is time to let other people help you.”

  Earlier in the day, I’d glimpsed confusion and even suspicion on some of my new students’ faces, as they’d wrestled over whether to listen to me or to the visiting members of the Boudiccate. Nothing that I’d said to them earlier had been enough to wipe away that uncertainty entirely.

  Apparently, what my students had actually needed was a moment to listen to each other, without any older figures trying to tell them what to think.

  Now the young women who stood behind Miss Banks—eight girls of different heights, ages, skin colors, and backgrounds—all nodded in grim agreement as she finished, looking me directly in the eyes: “You do have other practicing magicians in this house, and all of us need this school to survive. So—whether you care for it or not, Miss Harwood—we are coming to face that creature in the woods with you.”

  14

  I had never in my life felt so torn between glowing pride and abject horror.

  It took a long moment before I could summon words through my suddenly t
ight throat. “I appreciate your offer,” I said, looking from one strong, determined young face to another, “far more than I could ever possibly express. But you must know that I cannot accept it. I am your teacher. I made a commitment to protect you all.”

  “It’s not protecting us,” said Miss Hammersley fiercely, “to make us sit here twiddling our thumbs whilst you get killed and our school closes forever!” Her accent thickened as she spoke, her freckled skin flushed scarlet, and she rubbed nervously at the frayed ends of her cuffs, but her classmates all nodded immediate agreement.

  “Besides,” said Miss Stewart, “we’re hardly children. I’m one-and-twenty, and Julianna”—she nodded warmly to Miss Banks—“is nearly three-and-twenty. We’ve no need to be protected from our own decisions.”

  “We want to help ourselves,” Miss Banks added, echoing Amy. “We need this school. I know it was your idea in the beginning, Miss Harwood, but it’s not only yours anymore. It’s our future.”

  “I understand,” I murmured. There was so much shining magical potential in this room. The idea of all of these young women being sent back to their families, their dreams snatched away and their education lost... “But the truth is, you’re still young and untrained, and this is too dangerous for any of you.” As their faces hardened before me, visibly refusing to accept the truth of my words, I looked to Amy for support. “You tell them!” My sister-in-law could find the right words to persuade anybody.

  But she slowly shook her head. “How young and untrained were you, Cassandra, when you first started taking perilous risks for the sake of your magical future?”

  “Oh, for—that is not the point!” I stared at her in outraged disbelief. “I had to take those risks. I had no choice! No one would ever have agreed to teach me magic if I hadn’t.”

  “And no one is ever going to teach these girls, either,” said Amy, “if you don’t allow them to follow your example and take a risk or two to win their futures.”

  “Have you forgotten exactly how my example ended?” I let out a half-laugh, half-sob as I stepped back another inch from everyone else in the room, wrapping my arms around my chest. “When I took my last risk, I lost my magic. Do you think I would ever, for any reason, put a student of mine in that kind of danger?”